Bhārata

A few centuries later, 'Bhārata' became the usual name for the Indian Subcontinent.

The Viṣhṇu Purāṇa defines it in two lines: 'uttaram yat samudrasya himādreścaiva / dakṣiṇam varṣam tad bhāratam nāma', meaning 'the country that lies north of the ocean and south of the snowy mountains is called Bhārata.' It names no king, no city and no border post: only the sea below and the snow above, just like Sri Aurobindo's picture.

The name Bhārata is still used today. In north India it is usually written 'Bharat', and in south India often 'Bharatam'.

Different parts of the country described India in a similar way. A poem of ancient Tamil literature, about 2,000 years old, praises a king whose name is known 'from Cape Kumari in the south, from the great mountain in the north, from the oceans on the east and on the west...'. Cape Kumari is today's Kanyakumari, the great mountain is the Himalaya, and the two oceans are the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea. A Sanskrit text in the north and a Tamil poem in the far south drew the same land with the same four edges. Ancient Indians knew their geography well!

And the name is not only ancient. India's Constitution (the document that sets out the basic principles and laws of a nation, its rulebook) was first written in English, and right at the beginning it says 'India, that is Bharat'. The Hindi version says 'Bhārat arthāt India'. The Constitution came into force in 1950, and its first line carries a name several thousand years old.